ABOUT US

Hi there!

Whatever has brought you here, thank you!  Thank you for checking out our story.   In short, we are a happy family hoping to adopt. 

Dustinn grew up in Texas, the 1st of 5 children. Valery grew up in California, Virginia and Texas, the 2nd of 8 children. We both got our Bachelor's Degrees from Brigham Young University. We each served church missions (Dustinn in Mexico & Valery in South Africa).

Valery met Dustinn at a college service project (painting toy cars.)  Dustinn is typically shy, but right off the bat, he asked Valery for her phone number. After their first date, Dustinn decided he wanted to marry Valery.

While engaged, Dustinn told everyone we were going to have 32 children—and then he clarified “31 boys and 1 girl.” Dustinn was just teasing, but we both knew we wanted to have LOTS and LOTS of kids.

After getting married, we hoped to have children right away.  We were hopeful and excited but as months then years passed our hearts got heavier and heavier.  We watched friends and siblings date, marry, wait, begin "trying", conceive, bear children (and some repeat the cycle) while we visited with specialists and plead with God.  We were heartbroken.

Valery's appendix had ruptured shortly before getting married and one compassionate doctor suggested that this could be the cause of our infertility.  Valery underwent surgery with a very low chance of improvement.  However, one month later we were pregnant!  You can’t imagine how many happy tears were shed!  We danced around the room with that beautiful pee-stick that proclaimed our pregnancy. Nine months later, Valery gave birth to a handsome, healthy boy whom we named Bradshaw. 

It was quickly apparent that we would not be able to have more biological children.

When Bradshaw was only an infant, Valery had a close friend (J) who had adopted her daughter.  One day, J showed Valery the scrapbook her daughter's birth mom had created as she shared her adoption story.  Valery: "My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my body.  I had an overwhelming feeling of awe and gratitude--and a strong feeling that adoption was part of the plan for our family."  Not long afterwards, we sat on the couch in an adoption agency to begin the paper work to become potential adoptive parents.

Several months later, on what seemed a very regular day (up until that point) the UPS man delivered a package with an unknown return address.  Dustinn and I sat on the carpet and he used his key to slice the tape on the package.  The first thing we saw inside the package was an ultrasound picture, proclaiming, "it's a girl!" This was the first we heard of our little daughter Olivia.

Over the coming months we had the opportunity to have Olivia's birth mother come stay with us and to build tender relationships with both her birth mom and her birth dad (and grandparents.)

We love the laughter and happiness Bradshaw & Olivia bring to our home; we are greatly blessed. We hope that, through adoption, our home will be blessed with pitter-patter of another set of little feet. We don’t know God’s plan for us but we are happy and hopeful.

If we are blessed to adopt, we will tell that little one the story of his/her first mother’s love. We will shower him/her with love, cuddles, kisses, tickles and attention. We are eager to have our children play sports, learn musical instruments, travel, and go to college. We feel it is important for our family to have meaningful and diverse experiences through service.

Sincerely,
Dustinn, Valery, Bradshaw & Olivia